The Grapes of Wrath(9)

As a novelist, Steinbeck often experienced a delayed reaction to piercing events. Perhaps as early as February—but certainly no later than early April (“New book goes very fast but I am afraid it is pretty lousy. I don’t care much,” he said to Otis on April 26, 1938)—through approximately mid-May 1938, Steinbeck worked at the third stage of his effort and produced “L’Affaire Lettuceberg.” With this abortive—but necessary—side-track venture, Steinbeck’s migrant subject matter took its most drastic turn, inspired by an ugly event in Salinas, California, his home town. Earlier, in September 1936, Steinbeck had encountered the vicious clash between workers and growers in a lettuce strike: “There are riots in Salinas and killings in the streets of that dear little town where I was born,” he told novelist George Albee. The strike was smashed with “fascist” terrorism, and recollections of the workers’ defeat festered in Steinbeck for more than a year. “I am treasonable enough not to believe in the liberty of a man or a group to exploit, torment, or slaughter other men or groups. I believe in the despotism of human life and happiness against the liberty of money and possessions,” he said in a 1937 statement for the League of American Writers.

Perhaps as early as the first week of February 1938—and no later than the first week of April—galvanized by reports of the worsening conditions in Visalia and Nipomo, he felt the urgent need to do something direct in retaliation. John Steinbeck never became what committed activists would consider fully radicalized (his writings stemmed more from his own feelings and humane sensibility than from the persuasiveness of the left’s economic and social ideas), but by putting his pen to the service of his cause, he was as close to being a firebrand as he ever would. He launched into “L’Affaire,” a vituperative satire aimed at attacking the leading citizens of Salinas, who put together a cabal of organizers called “the committee of seven” to foment the ignorant army of vigilantes (assembled from the common populace of Salinas—clerks, service-station operators, shopkeepers). “L’Affaire Lettuceberg” was a detour from his main concern for the migrant workers, already recorded in “The Harvest Gypsies” and adumbrated in “The Oklahomans” rehearsals. In fact, “L’Affaire” wasn’t “literary” at all, but a “vulgar” tract concocted to do a specific job. Around mid-May 1938, Steinbeck, who had already written approximately 60,000 words (and was aiming for 10,000 more), confessed to Annie Laurie Williams: “I’ll have the first draft of this book done in about two weeks…. And it is a vicious book, a mean book. I don’t know whether it will be any good at all. It might well be very lousy but it has a lot of poison in it that I had to get out of my system and this is a good way to do it.”

Within days, however, Steinbeck wrote to Otis and Covici (who had already announced the publication of “L’Affaire”) to inform them that he would not be delivering the manuscript they expected:

This is going to be a hard letter to write…. This book is finished and it is a bad book and I must get rid of it. It can’t be printed. It is bad because it isn’t honest. Oh! these incidents all happened but—I’m not telling as much of the truth about them as I know. In satire you have to restrict the picture and I just can’t do satire.… I know, you could sell possibly 30,000 copies. I know that a great many people would think they liked the book. I myself have built up a hole-proof argument on how and why I liked it. I can’t beat the argument but I don’t like the book. And I would be doing Pat a greater injury in letting him print it than I would by destroying it. Not once in the writing of it have I felt the curious warm pleasure that comes when work is going well. My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other and then I deliberately write this book the aim of which is to cause hatred through partial understanding. My father would have called it a smart-alec book. It was full of tricks to make people ridiculous. If I can’t do better I have slipped badly. And that I won’t admit, yet.

The final stage of writing culminated in The Grapes of Wrath. His conscience squared, his integrity restored, Steinbeck quickly embarked on the longest sustained writing job of his early career. Ridding himself of poison by passing through a “bad” book proved beneficial, he told Otis on June 1, 1938: “It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive.… I only feel whole and well when it is this way.” Naturally, his partisanship for the workers and his sense of indignation at California’s labor situation carried over, but they were given a more articulate and directed shape.